Having Fun Making Media – Photos

Another Channel on the Nintendo Wii is called the PhotoChannel. Its basically a photo viewer app that allows you to organize and perform basic edits. You import your photos into the Wii via SD card. This allows you to look at them on your TV. All this is done with the wireless Wii remote controller. Nothing too earth shattering new on the tech front but quite radical on the “where people use it” front. Watch this vid then I’ll elaborate.

For years people have been talking about the merging of the TV and the Computer and the Internet and the Living Room. Lots of attempts at bridging these worlds are going on. Game consoles makers like Sony and Microsoft have been into it for awhile. Now its Nintendo’s turn.

All this time people seem to think it was the killer app that would be responsible for successful merger of TV/Living Room and Computer/Internet. It appears its much more about timing and number of concurrent users. Putting a small computer in your living room just hasn’t caught on with the masses of TV users. But if you give people a device that is fun and you can SHARE STUFF AND FUN WITH OTHERS you win. That’s what I’m predicting.

How do you pull the TV/Internet merger off? Make a very usable device that lots of people want. So far the Nintendo Wii is experiencing an amazing level of popularity. Its hasn’t been available for sale very long and already the buzz on community news sites like Digg is huge.

Its possible that the Wii will have all the tools you need to make, edit, and share news. (you still need some knowledge and other tools for sure. Like a camera.) It’ll have a web browsers for viewing and writing, it has a photo application to view photos (will it allow you to upload to the internet too?), it has a built in bulletin board for local and possible global social networking, you can establish identity with the Mii character you make on the Mii Channel, it’ll play audio and video, and oh yeah you can play games with it too.

The big question for me is, Can a closed system grow? Is simplicity and ease of use a worthy trade off for not being able to officially develop (aka hack) a Wii? Is there a Nintendo Wii API (Application Programmers Interface) in the works? Like the Flickr or Google API? Wii mash-ups would be amazing!

Its possible that the content you get from Wii media makers via the Wii Console may not suffer from the walled garden. We shall see.